Border states (Civil War)
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The term
border states refers to five
slave states of
Delaware,
Kentucky,
Maryland,
Missouri, and
West Virginia that were on the border between the
Northern Union states and the
Southern slave states that formed the
Confederate States of America. In some of these states, there were both pro-Confederate and pro-Union governments, factions and men (sometimes even from the same family) that fought as soldiers on opposite sides in the
American Civil War.
The five border states were
Delaware,
Kentucky,
Maryland,
Missouri, and
West Virginia (the
District of Columbia is sometimes included for geographical convenience). West Virginia was formed, in
1863, from the northwestern counties of
Virginia that had
seceded from Virginia after Virginia seceded from the Union. In the cases of Kentucky and Missouri, the states had two state governments during the
American Civil War, one supporting the
Confederacy and one supporting the
Union.
In addition, two territories, not yet states—specifically the
Indian Territory (now the state of
Oklahoma), and the
New Mexico Territory (now the states of
Arizona and
New Mexico)—also permitted slavery. Yet very few slaves could actually be found in these territories, despite the institution's legal status there. During the war, the major Indian tribes in Oklahoma signed an alliance with the Confederacy and participated in its military efforts. Residents of New Mexico Territory were of divided loyalties, the region being split between the Union and Confederacy at the 34th Parallel. Oklahoma is often cited as a "border state" today, but Arizona and New Mexico are rarely, if ever, so characterized.
With geographic, social, political, and economic connections to both the North and South, the border states were critical to the outcome of the war and still delineate the cultural border that separates the North from the South. After
Reconstruction, most of the border states adopted
Jim Crow laws resembling those enacted in the South, but in recent decades some of them (most notably
Delaware and
Maryland) have become more Northern in their political, economic, and social orientation, while others (particularly
Kentucky and
West Virginia) have adopted a predominantly Southern persona, while still having some substantial Northern influences.Today, the phrase is also sometimes applied in common usage to the states of the upper South that formed the northern tier of the Confederacy, such as
Arkansas,
Tennessee,
Virginia, and
North Carolina.
Delaware
Delaware never seriously considered secession.
Maryland
The
Maryland Legislature rejected secession (
April 27,
1861), but only after the
rioting in Baltimore and other events had prompted a federal declaration of
martial law. As a result of the Union army's heavy presence in the state and the suspension of
habeas corpus by
Abraham Lincoln, several Maryland state legislators, who were believed to support secession, were arrested and imprisoned by Union authorities. Maryland contributed several units of troops to both the Confederate and Union armies. Maryland was omitted from the
Emancipation Proclamation, but abolished slavery during the Civil War.
Kentucky
Kentucky was truly instrumental in the Union victory during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln once said "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capital" (Washington, which was surrounded by slave states: Confederate Virginia and Union-controlled Maryland.) He is further reported to have said that he
hoped to have God on his side, but he
had to have Kentucky.
Kentucky, in fact, did not secede, but a faction formed a government and it was recognized by the
Confederate States of America as a member state.
Kentucky Governor,
Beriah Magoffin, proposed that slave states like Kentucky should conform to the United States constitution and remain in the Union. When Lincoln requested 75,000 men to serve in the Union, Magoffin, a Southern sympathizer, countered that Kentucky would "furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister southern states." Kentucky tried to remain neutral, even issuing a proclamation
May 20,
1861 asking both sides to keep out. Kentucky's neutrality was broken when Confederate General
Leonidas Polk invaded
Columbus, Kentucky in 1861. The Kentucky Legislature, in response, passed a resolution directing the governor to demand the evacuation of Confederate forces from Kentucky soil. Magoffin
vetoed the proclamation, but the legislature overrode his veto and the resolution passed. The legislature further decided to back General
Ulysses S. Grant and his Union troops stationed in
Paducah, Kentucky, on the grounds that the Confederacy voided the original pledge by breaking Kentucky's neutral status first.
Southern sympathizers were outraged at the legislature's decisions, citing that Polk's troops in Kentucky were only en route to countering Grant. Later legislative resolutions, such as inviting Union General
Robert Anderson to enroll volunteers to expel the Confederate forces, requesting the governor to call out the militia, and appointing Union General
Thomas L. Crittenden in command of Kentucky forces, only incensed the Southerners further. (Magoffin vetoed the resolutions, but all were overridden.) In 1862, an act disenfranchising citizens that entered the Confederate army was passed. Thus Kentucky's neutral status evolved into backing the Union, with most who originally sought neutrality turning to the Union cause.
When Confederate General
Albert Sidney Johnston captured
Bowling Green, Kentucky in the summer of 1861, the self-proclaimed Confederates in western and central Kentucky moved to establish a Confederate state government. A formal Confederate convention met in Russellville in November of 1861. One hundred and sixteen delegates from 68 counties elected to depose the current government, under Magoffin, and create a
provisional government loyal to Kentucky's new unofficial Confederate Governor,
George W. Johnson. A month later,
December 10,
1861, Kentucky became the 13th state admitted to the Confederacy. Kentucky, along with Missouri, was a state with representatives in both Congresses and with regiments in both Federal and Confederate armies.
Magoffin, still functioning as official governor in
Frankfort, would not recognize the Kentucky Confederates, nor their attempts to establish a government in the state. He continued to declare Kentucky's official status in the war was as a neutral state--even though the legislature backed the Union. Magoffin, fed up with the party divisions within the population and legislature, announced a special session of the legislature and then resigned his office in 1862.
Bowling Green remained occupied by the Confederates until February 1862, when General Grant moved from Missouri through Kentucky, along the Tennessee line. Confederate Governor Johnson fled Bowling Green with the Confederate state records, headed south, and joined Confederate forces in Tennessee. After Johnson was killed in the Battle of Shiloh,
Richard Hawes was named Confederate Governor. Shortly afterwards, the Confederate Provisional Congress was adjourned on
February 17,
1862, on the eve of inauguration of a permanent Congress. However, as Union occupation dominated the state, the Kentucky Confederate government, as of 1863, existed only on paper and representation in the permanent congress was minimal. It was finally disbanded when the Civil War ended in 1865.
Missouri
After the secession of Southern states began, the
Missouri legislature called for the election of its own special convention on secession. The convention voted decisively to remain within the Union, but pro-Southern Governor
Claiborne F. Jackson ordered the mobilization of several hundred members of the state militia, who gathered in a camp in
St. Louis. Jackson planned to use the men (officially on training) to seize the
Federal arsenal in the city. Before Jackson made any hostile moves, however, Union General
Nathaniel Lyon struck first, encircling the camp and forcing the state troops to surrender. Lyon's inexperienced soldiers, largely German immigrants, marched the prisoners through the streets, then opened fire on the largely hostile crowds of civilians who gathered around them, an incident that became known as the "
St. Louis Massacre."
These events crystalized the Unionist and Confederate parties within the state. Governor Jackson appointed
Sterling Price, president of the convention on secession, as head of the new
Missouri State Guard. Jackson and Price were forced to flee the state capital of
Jefferson City on
June 14,
1861, however, in the face of Lyon's rapid advance. In the town of
Neosho, Missouri, Jackson called the state legislature into session; a minority of legislators responded, and enacted a secession ordinance that was recognized by the Confederacy on
October 30,
1861. (See the
Missouri secession controversy.) With the elected governor in exile and the legislators largely dispersed, the convention on secession reconvened as the Unionist provisional government, and elected
Hamilton Gamble as provisional governor. President Lincoln's administration immediately recognized Gamble's government, which provided both militia forces for service within the state and volunteer regiments for the federal army.
See-saw fighting ensued between Union forces and a combined army of General Price's State Guard and Confederate troops under General
Ben McCulloch. After victories at the battle of
Wilson's Creek and the siege of
Lexington, Missouri, the Confederate forces had little choice but to retreat to
Arkansas in the face of a largely reinforced Union army. Though regular Confederate troops would stage large-scale raids into Missouri, the fighting in the state for the next three years consisted mostly of
guerrilla warfare on a scale seen nowhere else in the
American Civil War.
West Virginia
Unionists in
Virginia organized a series of meetings known as the
Wheeling Convention to debate setting up an independent state. After a series of battles in 1861, the Union army eventually drove out Confederate forces. In 1863, the pro-Union politicians formed the state of
West Virginia from Virginia's northwestern counties, seceding from Virginia and entering the Union with a constitution that freed any slave over 21 years of age; gradually, it would have abolished slavery.
New Mexico and Arizona Territories
Conventions at
Mesilla, New Mexico on
March 18,
1861 and
Tucson, Arizona on
March 23 adopted an ordinance of
secession. The conventions established a pro-southern government for the southern portions of the territory and called for the election of representatives to petition the Confederacy for admission and relief.[
1]
Lewis Owings of Mesilla was elected the territory's first Provisional Governor and
Granville Henderson Oury of Tucson was chosen to present the territory's petition for admission into the Confederacy.[
2] In July 1861, Confederate forces from Texas, under Lt. Col.
John Baylor, entered Mesilla, described as "a strongly pro-Confederate community."[
3] The following day, Union Maj.
Isaac Lynde approached Mesilla to engage Baylor's forces. Baylor's men, accompanied by militia out of Mesilla, attacked and defeated Lynde at the
Battle of Mesilla on
July 27. On
August 1, Baylor proclaimed that the
Confederate territory of Arizona would extend to the 34th parallel and named himself the new territorial governor.[
4] The territory was home to several subsequent engagements and skirmishes between the western armies of the Union and the Confederacy during the war. The Confederate loss at the
Battle of Glorieta, in March 1862, drove them back to Texas, ending the involvement of New Mexico in the Civil War conflict. [
5]
Other issues
* Though
Tennessee had officially seceded,
East Tennessee was a hotbed for pro-Unionism. Tennessee came under control of Union forces in 1862 and was omitted from the
Emancipation Proclamation. After the War, Tennessee was the first state readmitted to the Union.
*
Winston County, Alabama issued a resolution of secession from the state of Alabama.
* The
Red Strings were a prominent Southern anti-secession group in areas of
Virginia and
North Carolina that had few slaves.
*
New Jersey had not yet completely outlawed slavery, but it never considered secession.
* Conflict over allowing slavery in
Bleeding Kansas, as a result of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, was major fuel to the Civil War. Kansas was admitted in January, 1861, after the secession of
South Carolina, but before the attack on
Fort Sumter.
President
Abraham Lincoln's famous
Emancipation Proclamation was designed with the interests of border states in mind. The Proclamation exempted slaves within current Union-controlled territory to prevent backlash from these states, which Lincoln believed crucial to the war effort. Though the partial emancipation was criticized by some, Lincoln maintained that only
Congress, or the border states themselves, had the authority to abolish slavery within the Union.
* Ash Steven V.
Middle Tennessee Transformed, 1860-1870 Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
* Baker Jean H.
The Politics of Continuity: Maryland Political Parties from 1858 to 1870 Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973.
* Richard S. Brownlee,
Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861-1865 (1958)
* Coulter E. Merton.
The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky University of North Carolina Press, 1926.
* Curry Richard O.
A House Divided: A Study of Statehood Politics and the Copperhead Movement in West Virginia. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964.
* Michael Fellman,
Inside War. The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri during the American Civil War (1989).
* Fields, Barbara.
Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground : Maryland During the Nineteenth Century (1987)
* Frazier Donald S.
Blood and Treasure: Confederate Empire in the Southwest. Texas A&M University Press, 1995.
* Donald L. Gilmore.
Civil War on the Missouri-Kansas Border (2005)
* Hancock Harold.
Delaware during the Civil War. Historical Society of Delaware, 1961.
* Harrison Lowell.
The Civil War in Kentucky University Press of Kentucky, 1975.
* Josephy, Alvin M. Jr.,
The Civil War in the American West. 1991.
* Kerby, Robert L.
Kirby Smith's Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863-1865 Columbia University Press, 1972.
* Maslowski Peter.
Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862-65 1978.
* Jay Monaghan.
Civil War on the Western Border, 1854-1865 (1955)
* George E. Moore.
A Banner in the Hills: West Virginia's Statehood (1963)
* Parrish William E.
Turbulent Partnership: Missouri and the Union, 1861-1865 University of Missouri Press, 1963.
* Patton James W.
Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860-1867 University of North Carolina Press, 1934.
* Rampp Lary C., and Donald L. Rampp.
The Civil War in the Indian Territory. Austin: Presidial Press, 1975.
* Sheeler J. Reuben. "The Development of Unionism in East Tennessee."
Journal of Negro History 29 (1944): 166-203. in JSTOR
*
Constitutional Union Party (United States)*
Free state*
Slave state*
Old South*
Deep South*
New South*
The Solid South*
Mr. Lincoln and Freedom: Border StatesInternal Links
